Two sentences, same content:
Comme les prix ont augmenté et que les gens consomment moins, le gouvernement a décidé d’intervenir.
La hausse des prix et le recul de la consommation ont conduit le gouvernement à intervenir.
The second is not more difficult. It is not longer — it is shorter. It is simply French in a way the first is not quite. Where English keeps a verb, French reaches for a noun, and a reader who has never been told this writes correct B2 French for years without ever sounding like a French writer.
This is the single most visible difference between a competent B2 text and a C1 one, and it is learnable in an afternoon.
| Verbal (B2) | Nominal (C1) |
|---|---|
| Quand on a mis en œuvre la réforme… | Dès la mise en œuvre de la réforme… |
| Parce que le chômage a augmenté… | En raison de l’augmentation du chômage… |
| Après qu’il est parti… | Après son départ… |
| Bien qu’il soit fatigué… | Malgré sa fatigue… |
| Si les prix baissent… | En cas de baisse des prix… |
| Pour qu’on comprenne mieux… | Pour une meilleure compréhension… |
Notice the side-effect: every nominalisation on the right removed a subjunctive. That is not a coincidence. This is the mechanism behind la fuite élégante from B1 lesson 7 and from lesson 1 of this tier — French avoids the subjunctive largely by nominalising its way past it.
The endings are regular enough to guess with. Store each verb with its noun.
| Ending | Verb → noun | Gender |
|---|---|---|
| -ment | développer → le développement · accroître → l’accroissement | masculine |
| -tion / -sion | augmenter → l’augmentation · décider → la décision | feminine |
| -age | passer → le passage · recycler → le recyclage | masculine |
| -ance / -ence | croître → la croissance · émerger → l’émergence | feminine |
| -ure | fermer → la fermeture · ouvrir → l’ouverture | feminine |
| -té | difficile → la difficulté · rare → la rareté | feminine |
| bare stem | baisser → la baisse · reculer → le recul · appeler → l’appel | varies |
la baisse, le recul, la hausse, l’envoi, l’appel, le retour, le rejet, la reprise, l’essor. Short, abstract, everywhere in the press — and invisible to a learner who is looking for a suffix. Collect them.
A dozen nouns do most of the work in French analytical writing. They are almost content-free on their own, which is exactly why they are useful: they let you name the kind of thing you are discussing.
| French | Pronunciation | Meaning & use |
|---|---|---|
| un constat | uhn kohn-STAH | an observed finding — le constat est sans appel |
| un enjeu | uhn ahn-ZHUH | what is at stake — l’enjeu est démocratique |
| la portée | lah por-TAY | scope, significance — une décision de portée générale |
| un dispositif | uhn dees-po-zee-TEEF | a scheme, an arrangement — le dispositif d’aide |
| une démarche | ün day-MARSH | an approach, a procedure |
| une tendance lourde | ün tahn-dahns LOORD | a deep-seated trend |
| le recours à | luh ruh-KOOR ah | the resort to — le recours à l’emprunt |
| la remise en question | lah ruh-meez ahn kes-TYOHN | the calling into question |
| l’aboutissement | lah-boo-tees-MAHN | the culmination, the outcome |
| la prise en compte | lah preez ahn KOHNT | the taking into account |
| un phénomène | uhn fay-no-MEN | a phenomenon |
| l’ampleur | lahn-PLUHR | the scale, the extent |
Le fait que, ce dont and en quoi are how you make a whole clause into a subject or an object.
Le fait que les salaires stagnent explique tout. — clause as subject.
Voilà ce dont il faudrait débattre. — the thing one should debate.
Je ne vois pas en quoi cela change la situation. — in what way.
Elle a expliqué en quoi sa méthode différait. — in what respect.
For the mood after le fait que, see lesson 1: indicative asserts, subjunctive suspends.
Nominal style has one serious cost: it deletes the agent. On a décidé de fermer l’usine names a decider. La fermeture de l’usine names nobody. That is precisely why administrations love it — and why lesson 19 treats the same device under the name langue de bois.
| Over-nominalised | Better |
|---|---|
| La mise en place de la procédure de vérification de la conformité des dossiers… | Pour vérifier que les dossiers sont conformes… |
| Une amélioration de la prise en compte des besoins est souhaitable. | Il faudrait mieux tenir compte des besoins. |
Nominalise to compress what your reader already knows, and use a verb for the thing you actually want to say. One nominal group per clause is elegant; three is bureaucracy.
French administrative and academic writing is the world capital of nominal style, and the concours tradition rewards it: a note de synthèse written in plain verbal French reads as under-powered to an examiner. It is also the target of a long-running critique — Orwell's complaint about English officialese has an exact French equivalent in the campaigns against le jargon administratif.
Québec has pushed hard the other way. The Politique de la langue claire in public administration, and the OQLF's own style guidance, explicitly recommend verbs over nominalisations and short sentences over periods — partly because so much Québécois administrative text is produced alongside an English version, where plain-language norms are entrenched. A Québec government letter is usually markedly more verbal than its French counterpart.
Give the noun, with its article.
Fill in the missing noun.
Choose from: constat · enjeu · portée · dispositif · ampleur.
1. Why does nominalising often remove a subjunctive?
2. What does la fermeture de l’usine lose compared with on a fermé l’usine?
3. Which is the idiomatic C1 formulation?